Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

Turns out, a giant visual cue for "who's a doctor, who's in charge, who's shooting things" is pretty useful for civilians in a planetary warzone.

When I was teaching at Strong, staff members were forbidden from having Facebook pages (though a number did) and I've avoided that ever since.

Everything you need to know about watching Star Trek Discovery:

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/star-trek-discovery-how-to-stream-release-date-time-and-more/

Why are the hero's starships in modern Star Trek seemingly always so much smaller than that of the enemy?

Romulans and Klingons are more brutal to their miners.
Therefore, more productivity, therefore more raw materials for ship building.

Because if the ships were equal size, or the hero ship was larger, the villain wouldn't seem to be so menacing.

Also, this.

I would think most viewers were somewhat more discerning that that. After all in the Original Series, the Enterprise was clearly larger than their Romulan, Tholian, and probably Klingon opponents. Not to mention the poorly seen Orion suicide ship (Journey to Babel). Or Nomad (The Changeling).

In fact from the Original Series the only enemy ship that I can recall clearly dwarfing the Enterprise was the Planet Killer (The Doomsday Machine).

Oh, sure, I can lay out a number of scenarios where it would be more dramatic (eventually) to have the villains in a smaller ship. Imagine if the first time the Enterprise encountered the Borg, instead of a giant cube, there was a tiny ship with just two Borgs in it. They make nice, get beamed over to the Enterprise, and then begin assimilating the crew rapidly. You've got a story with a desperate struggle against the Borg, focused on individuals, rather than two ships blasting away at one another. It'd be an intense episode.

Problem is, however, that in an era where people have multiple viewing choices (and we'll deal with this during when TNG was airing, and ignore the plethora of entertainment now), you want something that catches their eye as they're flicking through channels. How do you do that? Showing a bunch of Red Shirts fighting in a corridor? Eh, those fuckers are dead anyway, I'll catch it in a rerun. Sticking the Enterprise in front of a giant ship gets the person flipping channels to stop and say, "Holy shit! Those guys are fucked! I gotta watch this now!"

Krawl's sworn ships were small, but they tore the Enterprise apart.

On the other hand, the First Federations warning buoy that actually endangered the Enterprise before they phasered it was tiny in comparison.

After the entitlement complex and bigotry out of Archer, it's a wonder that Starfleet ever had another male captain.

I know its been a long time but I thought Archer wasn't a bigot per se. He just had a big personal grudge against the Vulcans because he thought they held humans back (which they did) so his father didn't get to see the flight of the first Warp Five capable ships that was his dream.

Though what was so magical about "Warp Five" I've really never understood.

Well Warp Drive seems to vary with each show. Sort of like Superman's powers depend on what comic or show you're reading or watching.

Here's a decent video I found on Warp Drive that shows how fast the ships are.



The main point is that you can see how the NX-01 Enterprise being able to go Warp 5 is significantly faster than plain old light speed.

Light speed which is already damn fast takes 17 hours to get from Earth to the edge of where our solar system ends and interstellar space begins. At Warp 5 the NX-01 Enterprise takes 7 minutes. Imagine how slow Warp 2, 3, and 4 are relative to Warp 5.

IIRC one of the reasons that Gene Roddenberry insisted on "nothing goes Warp 10 or faster" for TNG was that he got tired of the constant "pushing the envelope" in the original series regarding the Enterprise's top speed.

Several episodes seemed to suggest that prolonged Warp 7 speed was dangerous and Warp 8 was just insane.

In "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" the ship went Warp 10.

In circles.

And in "By Any Other Name" the ship was going to maintain Warp 11.

For 300 years!!!

lest we forget...

I posted that in the unite the fanbase thread.

The thing you seem to be forgetting is that early TNG actually did suck, though.

Well, yes but.

It did what it did for its time, which was show us flashy stuff that made us imagine a better future, and that included a better show.

It's true that a new show today won't have the benefit of such a low bar, though.

I agreed but I would not say TNG "sucked" its first couple of seasons. It was crushingly boring. Especially the first season. The Second season started to get better but it was hamstrung by the writers strike which killed four episodes outright and probably caused four more to be made that might not have been bothered with.

So, you don't think that "crushingly boring" is a healthy component of the "it sucks"? That's weird.

I think everything that's crushingly boring actually sucks.

They aren't necessarily to the same thing. I think "Space:1999" was a terrible television show. But it wasn't boring. At least not all the time. The first season of SeaQuest: DSV was boring but it wasn't really terrible. The science for example held up pretty good. The other two seasons (DSV then 2032) were far more energetic but the second season was a terrible show with the crew battling the sea god Neptune, giant predatory plants, and monstrous sea worms.

There are lots of different aspects of a television show. Particularly a science fiction show. Star Trek: Original Series had rather primitive special effects even for what could be done in that era. But the background music was outstanding and works well to this day.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was boring. But the score was outstanding and inspiring.

All boring shows suck. Boring automatically means "sucks".

But not all shows that suck are boring. Something shows that suck suck for other reasons.

Star Wars TPM had exciting stuff and wasn't all that boring, but it sure sucked.

The theme!
It begins and ends with the Alexander Courage theme, but all the middle stuff is new.

Now that's more like it! After four years of Faith of the Heart, we needed a proper theme. I don't understand why every show couldn't have the fanfare and then lead into its own theme?

The instrumental theme on the end credits (of Enterprise) should have been the theme.
Probably was supposed to be until Berman messed with things.

I always that too.

"Star Track Discovery"